By all criteria, this a concentration camp. Not “concentration camp” as rhetorical inflation, or emotionally manipulative shorthand, or edgy metaphor—but as in: literally.
As in: detention without trial, state control, inhumane living conditions, forced labor, dehumanization, brutal violence, isolation from accountability, psychological torture, and—by every available logical extension—murder.
That last one we can’t yet verify in the strict evidentiary sense, but the circumstances suggest it like smoke suggests fire, and they are already trying to hide their actions and deny what is occurring.
The stated purpose of CECOT is to put people in violently cramped, close confinement with each other until they die.
It is a deathcamp.
ICE detention centers in the USA count as concentration camps as do American Indian reservations, too, but yes we now have our own concentration camps out-of-country like the CIA black sites for illegal rendition or the NAZIs in Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Belarus and the “secure hamlet” programs carried out by our Vietnam vets, for examples.
From Wikipedia:
“A concentration camp is a prison or other facility used for the internment of political prisoners or politically targeted demographics, such as members of national or minority ethnic groups, on the grounds of state security, or for exploitation or punishment.”
I’d say it tracks.
It is not new though, it started with Guantanamo concentration camp for Taliban fighters.
It is not new though, it started with Guantanamo concentration camp for Taliban fighters.
It is not new though, it started with 10 concentrations camps during World War 2 for Japanese Americans.
In Die Hard, when Hans is describing Takagi, he says “interned at Manzanar 1942-43”. 9 year old imsufferableninja thought he was talking about an internship at a prestigious company called Manzanar. 25 year old imsufferableninja finally figured it out. They did not teach about the US’s concentration camps at my schools, for some reason…
Master Miyagi from Karate Kid also had it rough.
It is not new though, it started with Guantanamo concentration camp for Taliban fighters.
It is not new though, it started with 10 concentrations camps during World War 2 for Japanese Americans.
It is not new though, it started with concentration camps for the extermination and removal of the Native Americans
Guantanamo Bay is/was its own fresh hell, but it was not a concentration camp.
They’re right that we should at minimum not allow them to define how we talk about this, and we should call it what it is.
But we should also have a plan to avoid getting put in a concentration camp when we do so. Stay safe, and be good everyone.
How is this all going so fast, tho? Didn’t it take the nazis a few years to get to this point?
The Nazis didn’t have the historical context of the Nazis’ rise to power to help guide them.
Nazis got to all the points they wanted so lightning-fast that nothing happening now can rival it.
That’s one of the reasons for the cultural shock about Nazis - everybody expected such processes to happen very slowly, in small flashes, as they do now. Thus them to be voted out or pressed out as a reaction, or at least for most potential victims to flee Germany, gradual pressure, compromise, all that.
Instead they came to power, almost momentarily changed the internal balance of power (of armed forces, their own paramilitary organizations, veteran organizations and such), anschlussed Austria, “solved unemployment” (organized massive programs of building autobahns and such, not very economically viable, but a symbol and a working mechanism), attracted investments (various scams on enormous scale, but the funds were attracted and it wasn’t all scams), scaled the military back to something realistic, performed successful rearmament programs … And built concentration camps. They started with something like Guantanamo almost immediately after coming to power, then didn’t lose any time to learn.
See, they had an apparatus, even a social layer of very well educated people, but with indoctrination of service and obedience, and the legacy of German science and industry and patriotism too. They broke that, but not before successfully using it for a lot of things.
That’s the problem with building good systems, they prevent idiots from learning who they are earlier. It’s the same with Sun and DEC and other legacy in tech. Everybody still uses their paradigms and products descended from theirs. Vision, architecture, aesthetic (only hidden somewhere deep). So everybody big has now IMHO wrong ideas about how to solve problems, but since everybody also uses solutions made by those who had right ideas 30-15 years ago, they don’t get the feedback. Today’s tech is a pile of crap reinforced with yesteryear grass, but it doesn’t fall apart in your hands because for the main problems you use solutions from a more civilized age.
While this was informative, I don’t quite understand the progressive change from concentration camps in nazi Germany to a fanatic escalating hate for… Uh… x86 architecture?
Sounds like a really, really wild ride to be on.
I suggest making some reforms to state institutions before someone else gains control of at least two thirds of the political power. Having support from two thirds of a legislative body is sufficient to completely rewrite a constitution in many cases, so the only question is whether a “supermajority” can reach some consensus.
I personally don’t have a lot of hope for peaceful reform, given what I see from https://ballotpedia.org/Results_for_ranked-choice_voting_(RCV)_and_electoral_system_ballot_measures,_2024
They’ve done it before, why would we think they wouldn’t do it again?
